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436 river, filled with lizards, after which he appeared before the King of Mictlan, when his tortuous journey was ended and his identity ceased.

It was also a belief that when the body began this journey it must have been buried for a period of four years. In this belief it was not the soul, but the body in actuality that made the mysterious journey.

For those who enjoy euphonious names, I will state that the name of the last stopping place was "Izmictlanapochcalocca, on which the alligator Xochitonal is encountered; the alligator is the earth's symbol and Xochitonal the last day of the year, which shows the body here reached the last stage of its existence and became dust of the earth."

When the two are united we see readily the connecting link in their ideas: that at the end of a certain time the body is converted into dust, and the dead are finished forever.

The Milk Tree for Dead Children—El Arbol de Leche de los Niños Muertos, embodies another superstitious tradition of the Nahoa Indians, which was the existence of a mansion where children went after death. This was called Chihuacuauhco, from a tree which was supposed to grow there, from the branches of which milk dropped to nourish the children which clung to them. It was believed that these children would return to populate the world after the race which then inhabited it had passed away.



The superstitions of to-day among the Mexican lower classes, though without this post-mortem materialism, are quite as strong and as closely adhered to. They are almost numberless, and the most